The French language has a grammatical gender system in which all nouns are assigned either a masculine or a feminine gender. Nouns provide two types of gender cues that can potentially guide gender attribution: morphophonological cues carried by endings and semantic cues (natural gender). The first goal of this study was to describe the…

This article presents three studies that investigate when syntactic constraints become available during the processing of long-distance backwards pronominal dependencies ("backwards anaphora" or "cataphora"). Earlier work demonstrated that in such structures the parser initiates an active search for an antecedent for a pronoun, leading to gender…

This study builds on the concept that aural-written verification helps L2 learners develop auditory discrimination skills, refine word recognition and gain awareness of form-meaning relationships, by comparing two modes of aural input: reading while listening (R/L) vs. listening only (L/O). Two test tasks (sequencing and gap filling) of 95 items,…

The purpose of this study is twofold: (a) to examine whether English finite morphology has the potential to differentiate children with and without language impairment (LI) from Spanish-speaking backgrounds and different levels of English proficiency in comparison to Hispanic English speakers and (b) to investigate the extent to which children who…

Understanding how words are created is potentially a key component to being able to learn and understand new vocabulary words. However, research on morphological awareness is relatively rare. In this study, over 660 preschool-aged children from three language groups (Cantonese, Mandarin, and Korean speakers) in which compounding morphology is…

The present study investigated the perception and production of English /w/ and /v/ by native speakers of Sinhala, German, and Dutch, with the aim of examining how their native language phonetic processing affected the acquisition of these phonemes. Subjects performed a battery of tests that assessed their identification accuracy for natural…

This paper presents a brief summary of processability theory as proposed by [Pienemann, M., 1998a. "Language Processing and Second Language Development: Processability Theory." John Benjamins, Amsterdam; Pienemann, M., 1998b. "Developmental dynamics in L1 and L2 acquisition: processability theory and generative entrenchment." "Bilingualism:…

Background: Narratives have been used by a number of researchers to investigate the language of children with specific language impairment (SLI). While a number of explanations for SLI have been proposed, there is now mounting evidence that children with SLI have limited memory resources. Phonological memory has been the focus of the research on…

Based on the statistical regularity of certain error types, an interlanguage grammar could be devised and applied to develop an intelligent computer tool, capable not only of identifying the typical errors in L2 student writing, but also of making adequate corrections. The purpose of the corrections is to make the student aware of the language…

The study investigated the ability of 10-month-old infants, from monolingual English speaking environments, to categorize comforting and approving infant-directed speech (IDS) utterances across languages. Infants participated in an infant-controlled habituation procedure, in which they heard up to 12 different exemplars, in 12 different languages,…

Infants younger than 20 months of age interpret both words and symbolic gestures as object names. Later in development words and gestures take on divergent communicative functions. Here, we examined patterns of brain activity to words and gestures in typically developing infants at 18 and 26 months of age. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were…

Purpose: To examine the behavioral effects and neural activation patterns associated with implicit semantic processing influences on phonological judgments during reading in children and adults. Method: Whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings were obtained from 2 groups, children (9-13 years) and adults, performing a homophone judgment…

In the present study, we looked at cross-modal priming effects produced by auditory presentation of morphologically complex pseudowords in order to investigate semantic integration during the processing of French morphologically complex items. In Experiment 1, we used as primes pseudowords consisting of a non-interpretable combination of roots and…

This paper investigates the relationship between phonological processing and reading ability amongst grade 4 and grade 5 Arabic speaking children in Egypt. In addition to measuring reading level, the study assessed the children's ability to identify rhymes, delete individual phonemes from words, retain and manipulate sequences of digit names and…

There is debate as to the relationship between mathematical ability and language. Some research has suggested that common processes underlie arithmetic and grammar while other research has suggested that these are distinct processes. The current study aimed to address this issue in a large group of 68 left hemisphere stroke patients who were all…